He glanced at the man in the rear view mirror and then quickly back. Goddamn, how could this possibly be happening? This was supposed to be an easy job, a quick pickup and delivery, with maybe a little fun along the way for him and Kyle. The hot little package in the back seat was born to be fucked, and the trip to deliver the human to the prison planet would only be a couple of days, but still tedious. What better way to relieve the boredom than by playing with the prisoner known in the world of porn as Randy Ryan, star of some of the sexiest damn porn films he’d ever watched? He and Kyle had actually talked about a three-way with the beautiful human. They had no plans to rape him, of course, but there was nothing to stop them from enticing him and maybe seducing him a little, if he was willing and up for it, so to speak. The bad joke now made him cringe.

Instead when the young man jumped off the transport, he got an immediate funny feeling and a whiff of something powerful and sweet that he’d never smelled before. Intrigued and almost compelled to get closer, he walked up behind him and when Ryan had turned and looked up at him, the shock almost knocked him off his feet.

Blayde’s brain screamed mate, and the strongest, most primal urge he’d ever experienced came over him, exhorting him to throw the man down on the ground, fuck him into the floor of the dock, and then carry him off somewhere to growl over him for a while. Mates for Lycans could be either male or female. In fact, many Lycans preferred males. This human male, in particular, was the closest thing to perfection Blayde had ever seen.

This human was his mate , his beloved, and he’d known it the moment he saw him in person. Even the human’s scent had called to him, a sweet, musky smell that made his cock stand up and take instant notice.

Before he could act on it, Blayde had jumped away from him and scared the human so badly he fell on his ass in a mud puddle. He might have yelled something at him too, he couldn’t quite remember. He was just happy he could control the compulsion as well as he had, because he had never felt anything so powerful in his life. He wondered briefly if this had anything to do with the ancient family curse, and then dismissed it from his mind. He could think about that later, when his mind wasn’t full of his mate.

So now what the fuck was he going to do? Blayde sure as h ell wasn’t ready for any damn mate. Mates were the beloved and spoiled spouses of the Lycans, who mated only once and for life. Never working outside the home, their mates existed to pleasure their wolves. In return they were well-loved, pampered and jealously guarded. They took a lot of care and attention, and Blayde wasn’t ready for any of that. He glanced back at the human in the back seat.He didn’t want or need a damn mate yet. Especially a two-faced, murderous, lying little messed-up sack of shit like the gorgeous young human sitting behind him, who was so damn beautiful it made his stomach hurt to look at him. Damn him! Why did he have to sit there looking so fucking adorable and so in need of protection.Don’t bite on that lip, damn it! That’s my job! And stop looking so fucking scared! What do you think I’m going to do, eat you? Well, hell, I just might at that.

Blayde was a Lycan wolf shifter like all of his race and a bounty hunter, a damn good one, too. On his planet, everyone was Lycan and a member of the same large family group. The Lycan shifters lived in packs, and were happier in close proximity to each other. Their pack had been isolated up here running the bauxite mines for over a hundred and fifty cycles, since the first transport brought the early settlers, all his wolf clan. Descendants of an ancient Lycan pack on the home planet, Blayde’s ancestors had come to start a new life on Lycanus 3, away from their political enemies back on Lycanus. Though those political enemies were long dead, the Balanescu pack had stayed on Lycanus 3, carving a good life on the desolate, yet mineral-rich planet.

It was only physically that they were isolated, however. Their occupations as voyagers made them unusually socialized for Lycans, who usually had little to do with other species, except for occasionally using them as mates or concubines. Because of this, they had a good command of many languages and tolerated the presence of other species much better than those on the home planet.

Because of their physical isolation, though, they’d been able to keep the bloodline pure, with only humans and a few other species brought in as mates, never as breeders. When they’d first settled the planet, the pack hierarchy, which had all but died out on the home planet, was necessary to keep order among the highly independent males. It was still firmly in place after all this time. Blayde was an alpha male, one of six alphas on Lycanus. The chiefalpha was Blayde’s older brother, Lucas, and then there were his four cousins, Kyle, Konnor, Larssen and Nikolai.

Luckily for them, only one of them was interested in running the pack, and that was Lucas. Neither Blayde nor his cousins wanted the responsibility, nor did they want to be tied down. Blayde became a bounty hunter and made a damn good living at it for himself and his pack. Kyle, Konnor, Larssen and Nikolai were also bounty hunters and voyagers, humping the bauxite to the far reaches of the galaxy and nowhere near ready to settle down. Kyle and Nikolai occasionally helped Blayde out when he had a full transport like he did for this trip, while Konnor and Larssen usually teamed up with their own bounties.

Damn it, he was too busy for this shit, not anywhere close to being ready to settle down and take care of a mate. Blayde slammed his fists onto the steering wheel, earning himself another frightened look from the little human. Ryan must already think he was a lunatic. The human had made a stupid, useless attempt to disguise himself at the auction, but Blayde would have known him anywhere, as he did from the first moment he’d seen him on the closed circuit broadcast, holding up that ridiculous sign, showing off the gorgeous body that belonged to him, damn it. He’d been scanning the auctions looking for bounties as he normally did when he’d seen the handsome boy standing naked on the stage with his little number over his head. He recognized him right away, of course, from all the movies he’d seen.

He was unprepared for the surge of pure adrenaline when he’d first spotted him, and realized the bidding was about to close out. Thank the gods, Ryanhadn’t gotten the price he was looking for the first night, and was scheduled to appear again. Blayde was able to arrange the pickup, and by the time Ryan came back the next night, he had his associates in place. All he had to do was hook him and reel him in.

It hadn’t been at all necessary to speak to him on the holo -cam, but he wanted to see him up close and for some reason, he’d had an almost physical craving to speak to him, to see those pretty green eyes staring into his. Then when he had him sitting in front of him, squirming around on the cold metal chair, he had such an immediate erection he could barely speak. The brown daubers covering his eyes enraged him, and he hated the other attempts he’d made to disguise himself. He’d never had such a strong reaction to a prisoner before. He’d even told the man to call him Alpha, a D/s term when used by humans or other species only when they were speaking to their master.

He couldn’t stop himself from toying with the pretty human a little, though he usually never played any stupid games like that with his bounties. Thenagain, he’d never had a bounty like Ryan before.

He’d been watching this beautiful human in porn films for over a full cycle, though his hair then had been long and golden blond, and his eyes as green as the forests up in the hills. Now he’d cut his pretty hair way too short,he’d earned himself a spanking for that, and Blayde would see to it directly. He even had a stupid little patch of hair under his lower lip.He’d see to that directly too.Blayde’s pack disliked facial hair on their mates, finding hair anywhere except the head to be unattractive. Surprisingly, the wolves had almost no body hair of their own in their human forms, and never wore beards of any kind.

It was traditional to shave any and all facial hair they found on their mates, a long tradition he would find great pleasure in following. Still, nothing Ryan had done had detracted from his beauty. His closely shorn hair, for example, only highlighted his bone structure and made him look even younger and more vulnerable, and gorgeous, if that were possible. Damn, it was all he could do not to throw him down and eat him right up.

The question was, what the hell was he going to do with him now? The idea of anyone taking him away from him was like a giant fist clenching his guts and ripping them out. But he couldn’t keep him, could he? What about the fact that Ryan was a drug-addicted whore and a murderer? A fucking little blackmailer and a thief?Wasn’t that enough to make Blayde want to take him to prison as fast as he could and let him be thrown in a cell for the rest of his natural life?

Fuck no, it wasn’t! Those things barely even gave him pause, and all he could think about was how the hell was he going to get his mateout of this fucked up mess he’d gotten himself into?

It wasn’t that he didn’t need t o be punished. He did, and Blayde would keep Ryan chained to his bed naked for the rest of his life if he had to, to make sure he got exactly what was coming to him, over and over and over again. As that picture ran through his mind, his cock swelled and strained against his pants. Shit, how much more could his cock grow before bursting from his trousers? Oh yes, he would take great pleasure in teaching his mate how to behave properly.

Ryan spoke up behind him so softly Blayde barely heard it at first.

“Are you…um…are you angry about something? Have I done something wrong?” Blayde turned a furious glare on the human. Ryan. He would use his real name, even though

he’d been going by the stupid name John Smith. As if he could hide his identity from Blayde. As if he could hide anything from him. Oh, he was going to have fun teaching Ryan a few things. “No,” he said flatly and made himself turn back toward the road before he pulled over and dragged him across the seat and into his arms.

Kyle spoke up beside him in a low tone, so Ryancouldn’t hear it over the noise of the motor.“Are you okay, Blayde?”

“Yes,” Blade replied tersely.

“Then where are you going? The holding cells are in the opposite direction.”